


Song of Solomon IV

by thinskinnedcalciumsipper



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3247247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinskinnedcalciumsipper/pseuds/thinskinnedcalciumsipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>courtship of a robin by a jay; garbage snuggly pyrocest i wrote on druuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song of Solomon IV

The first time you encounter the other one you are stalking inside, patrolling the snails-shell trail the engineer described to you -- you find them trespassing the inner hall -- you guess they are running for the flag -- you guess they are so surprised to see you they are rendered temporarily immobile, for an entire second passes in which they only look at you -- so you unhinge the jaw of the dragon at them, anointing them with brilliant red roses which bloom beautifully but cannot take root -- you insert the inquisitive snout of your ax into the wall which an instant earlier boasted their knuckle, but they are nimble -- they spring away, and you give chase, treading in their shadow until they've retreated too far into open air, into space unsafe for you, where they evaporate like a wisp in sunbright, so you return to your routine and don't encounter them again that day.

✿

The day after tomorrow, you are extracting with some effort your ax from the back of a scout you've reduced to a wet pile on the floor when you see them again, a violet silhouette dimming the door -- you are out of breath and badly battered -- you wash their front with flame to discourage pursuit, turn tail and peal down the hall towards the safety of the nest. When you peer over your shoulder, you see with some relief they have not followed.

✿

Three days after that, pacing the halls, you turn a corner and encounter them again, standing boldly in the center of the room, and you level the snaggle-toothed snout of your flamethrower at them, but they do not reply. They bear their weapon nose-up against their collar, contained like a tame snake. They only look at you.

You regard each other until, daringly, as you stare, they put aside their weapon -- they drop it on the very asylum altar which you have often washed with libations of hot offal and boiling blood -- they extract something from the reticule they wear on their hip -- it is a tired white daisy, and they insist upon it to you.

It goes up like an unwelcome thought ejected, instantaneously in the bustle of fire you thrust in their face, and with your knee and open palm you repel the interloper, but, surprised and puzzled as you find yourself, you find no motivation to disable them better, to apply the fire until it simmers them to stew in their suit -- you only repel them, and in the chaos, you quit them, and in the evening, in the dim solitude of your room, nursing your skinned knees (for you won't be seen by the lecherous doctor) you think that the other one must not be very smart -- and how had they guessed what kind of flower you liked?

✿

It is a week later, the end of an uneventful morning, while you creep through the balmy shadows of the tall walls, through the quiet and thick sticky air, the announcement is made that the intelligence has been captured and your team defeated.

The announcement is covered by the cries of consternation you hear occurring all around you -- from the honeycomb of halls, from beneath your feet -- and you hear the racket of gunfire and the ugly cheers coming, rising like a wave -- it touches the boiling foam of your bones -- you are standing at the busy upstairs epicenter of the promenade and there is no place you know to run to -- so, sick to your stomach, you put your fists on your hips like a cockerel boasting your size and you wait to die

for a long moment, until something alights on your shoulder, your waist, wrapped about your back; the hands that thrust you forward are almost gentle.

You are urged down the flight of stairs, around a brief corner, into an alcove you haven't noticed before -- it happens so fast -- a square of bare earth behind some rusted drums of something -- when you mutter in protest, you are pushed abruptly to your knees, and you'd almost be angry except you can hear a clatter of gunfire very close, very close, and you recognize the voice that shouts in the next room, the voice that abruptly ends.

The other one applies their forefinger to the ventilator that acts as a proxy for lips -- you become a mushroom, shying from the light, hugging your knees and tucking your head -- you hear the ostentatious diversion the other one is making, and on some level, you are grateful -- and when you hear the little boy from your corps cry, your valor spent, you can only cover your eyes and think of daisy chains.

It is a bad time. Winter has settled in you. The pond of your intestine is frozen, the snails, fronds and fishlings immobilized inside. You think like a blindworm, a pea seed, an unfinished cicada sleeping in the soil -- you must not be known, you must not be seen, you are not ready.

After a long time, as you are thinking you are in an egg, and your skin is a mere copper cup you intend to defeat, someone taps it to crack it and you peer up out of the pit in the ceiling, and it is the blue one, leaned in on their knee over you, and, for some reason, they have put on an elegant tea hat, and inside, despite yourself, thinly, you smile.

✿

Oftener and oftener they find you now. They are seeking you out. You encounter them only when it would be convenient -- never in conference or combat -- never when you'd be compelled to kill them (they are clever in their way, cunning.)

Stepping out of resupply, finding a quiet moment to recover your breath, sometimes even appearing behind you as you pace, without pageantry, a silent, seelie sprite followed by a familiar blue bauble of fire -- sometimes with some paltry surprise to put into your hands -- a biscuit, a marble, a paper box of matches -- you liked that a lot -- once, a pair of novelty spectacles with bulging acrylic eyes on springs. They dressed you in them and applauded. You recognized the faint strain of their laughter, and when you succumbed to it yourself, they seem pleased to the tips of the toes they stood up on.

(They make sounds, but they don't speak -- like you -- they alert you to their feelings with their tone and their entire bodies -- they expand and croon their pleasure at meeting you -- they mumble darkly as they huddle to inspect any little injuries you bear -- they invite you to dance with comically exaggerated swaying and playful chattering -- they look mutely at you for long moments, rigid and arrested with interest in you -- sometimes they sing, and sometimes you sing with them.)

These moments are stolen and short-lived, you both know -- you guess they are dangerous -- but you come to expect them -- what's more, you come to anticipate them.

When the other one evades you for an entire week, you even miss them.

✿

It is only when you encounter the blue one stumbling out of the gloom of the sewer, its limb obliterated and pouring blood forming dark pools about them, their intact hand proffered to you in mute appeal, only when you feel that sickening shock and drop and drowning that it occurs to you this person is your friend.

You insert yourself beneath their remaining arm and limp them to the alcove around the corner in which you recall a first aid center stands. You lower them, gently, gently, gently, to rest against the moss-encrusted wall -- very careful, cushioning their skull in the cup of your knuckle -- and -- it's happening too fast to permit time to deliberate, they're bleeding so much, everything happens too fast -- you shuck your mask and chuck it aside and bite the forefinger of your glove to draw it off, and as you kneel to unpack supplies you tell your friend (your voice sounds so strident and strange), "ayúdame, ayúdame."

You probe the awful hot pit inexpertly with your fingers -- you find no large hard bits, just pills of bone you pluck out -- you guess the bullet has passed them over -- they are mute, wracking, so much blood! -- so as they pinch with shivering fingers the bandage end you just wrap the mess up like a Christmas present and squeeze.

They wheeze one poppy seed sized spot of blood. They need a doctor.

Perhaps you are more fortunate than you often regard yourself, for you discover the enemy medic walking his dog immediately upon emerging in the foreign indigo cellar of the fort, close to the steps to the underworld, hurrying and murmuring together in intimate tones. You make a big show, throwing fire and roaring your dismay you count on be interpreted as stupid fury.

It is. You are pursued -- you lead them down, into the dark, into the tepid lapping water marked by pungent clouds of clotted blood, which gives them only brief pause -- you are nipped twice, barreling brazenly down the hall -- they are arrested by the cry of the other one, you see them assembling around them as you slip into the deep, nymph-like, departing their attention, you can't help but see even as you submerge the other ones eyes are pointed at you.

✿

They are away for a week in which the girlish trepidation you felt of them has become a crone of dark, hard dread, her claws cutting closer and closer to your stomach and petting the thin flimsy flute of your throat until, all of the sudden, one afternoon, as you stand at the maw of your domain looking out at the brightness, the blinding blue, and thinking of the other ones chickish way of adjusting their chin to examine you, they have drawn up behind you -- they've wriggled into your side so your shoulders squeak together -- their arm (it has been mended like magic) catches you and crushes you close -- their hands close covetously around yours and you sort of like it.

It is over in an instant. The other one intimately cups your cheek, absorbing the sight of you, and then they are padding away, boldly forward across the field -- they are so bold -- pausing just once to wave goodbye, and you reply.

You wander to the nest where the engineer is idling. You sit beside him and you are so still, in time, he pats you on the head and inquires kindly if you feel ill.

✿

In gestures and slurred murmurs they tell you they have an engineer too -- they rely on and revere him, as you do yours, perhaps even love him a little, as you do. They love candy and cakes. They love to dance.

You have never heard their voice or seen their face but you've begun to memorize their sounds, their entire repertoire of clicks, clucks and cooes, the surge of shoulder, palm and flow of their fingers which you've realized closely resemble your own, the wheel of their heel where their weight worries, the vivacious inertia of their knees, the metronome of their hips, their unguarded collar, utterly impudent. You admire it, a little.

Like fairies, you chat in waltzes, knots and chiming bells, tongues you can't recall being instructed in. Their touch is contract. Their look is so earnest -- you can see them so well.

They migrate up you -- the weeks in which they would timidly tap your fingertips warmed gloriously like dawning summer into days of linked arms, cleaving, cloying schoolgirls, then they found your shoulder, descended about your breast, wondered your waist till you were lifted a little off the ground -- perhaps they want your heat, they stay so close to you -- extremely close -- you recall being instructed to never permit anyone touch you in this way.

Hips bumping intimately, they steal with you into the cool solitude of the fort entrails, where leviathans of pipes and wires rumble and coil, tin hearts determinedly thrum, the dark passes a soothing quilt over you and concrete can consume the sound of rendezvous and revelry, you chase each other in playful parody of the war occurring above -- they are extremely ticklish, you've discovered -- you tuck in together in vents, beneath the boiler, share snacks, exchange tokens of your mutual esteem --and it must be admitted, you drift away together from time to time. You can't help it. It's very warm. Your dreams are sweeter in their arms.

It's evidently become difficult for them to depart you. They stare and stare and stare and press their cheek to yours until it threatens to bruise. Well, you don't suppose you mind that.

✿

When the want of child that was the moon has swollen into a matriarch, at shining midnight, a pebble clicks on your window.

You descend the spire from your room to the roof, from which you leap -- you unroll in a lap of damp, soft earth, speckled with dewy new spring sproutlings, and they are upon you -- their arms are large and hard -- they are very strong -- the fragrance of their garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon.

You find their hand and grasp it -- it is broad and perceptibly warm beneath two layers of rubber -- and they take off with you, around the wood, into the wild, you walk away from the sleeping, your guns and the site of the fire into ribbons and pearls of celestial lights and the embroidered veil of rain up the murmuring waterside, up the viridian avenue pitched in shushing boughs of fragrant pine, where the snail trails twinkle, hand in hand and humming.

You pause in the mosses beneath the mantle of a rolling willow to build a daisy chain -- you crown them with it and think they look very sweet. Their hand restored to yours shivers a little -- you cannot detect the reason -- so you kiss them. The ventilators of your masks click pleasantly together.

They know a cavern beyond the caravan of constellation spray -- beyond the water, a perfect glass alight with tendrils of ghostly white lilies, they lead you by the hand -- the odor of sweet narcissus, a whispered admission of passion -- they lead you to a pool beneath a sentinel of stone promontory, a slate cauldron churned by waterfall -- they touch your cheek, your temple, your relenting brow -- you see the stars shining in them, the crests of drifting mist, then the subterfuge of subterranean dark passes over their eyes -- their eyes come away -- their face slips away, their oily snakeskin cast off, and you look in astonished silence -- spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon -- they have the most wonderful hair you've ever seen -- it fills your hands, and their mouth fills yours, frankincense, myrrh and aloes.

The night is long, and the mincing hour returns your timidity to you -- by moonset you've imagined footsteps in impenetrable night, a malevolent eye in the wood, and it must be admitted you wavered -- but when diluted blue morning light first begins to bleed through the teeth of the waterfall grotto, on the rusted, busted jetsam, on your mutilated naked knees, on the dreaming meat of the blue one -- she is seeing you, and you feel implicitly she can keep you safe.

**Author's Note:**

> i got a little wild at the end...............pardonnez-moi i was e x t r e m e l y eager to end this


End file.
